Despite a small lead in polls, Hillary Clinton faces a more daunting challenge than Donald Trump in tonight’s debate, politics experts say.

To woo all-important undecided voters, she’ll need to overcome negative perceptions by presenting herself as a personable candidate with a vision for where she’ll take the country.

She’ll also need to quickly establish her presence on the stage she’ll share with a huge personality adept at dominating viewers’ attention.

“The bar is higher for her, and it’s not because she’s a woman,” said Chapman University political scientist Lori Cox Han, whose latest book examines what it will take for a woman to be elected president. “Her fallback is to get into policy, but she needs to connect with people. And she has to say why she wants to be president.”

Record numbers are expected to watch what could prove a critical event offering character-defining moments in a wildly unpredictable presidential contest now entering the homestretch.

“Conventional wisdom is that debates don’t make a difference, but this isn’t a conventional election,” said Jack Pitney, a political scientist at Claremont McKenna College. “It’s very high stakes for both of them.”

Trump’s “Make America Great Again” theme has given an aspirational framework to his campaign in a way the “Hope” and “Change” themes did for Barack Obama in 2008 – a resonant core message that Clinton is lacking, Han said.

The test for Trump will be avoiding an explosion of reckless statements, Han and Pitney agreed.

“He needs to keep his cool,” Pitney said. “For Trump, the bar isn’t very high. He’s got to avoid insulting large segments of the population. He’s probably going to make egregious factual errors, but they probably won’t register with the general population.”

Immigration, national security and jobs are topics likely to arise. So will issues that get at the character of the candidates, including Clinton’s emails, her role in the Benghazi attack, the Clinton and Trump foundations, Trump’s business dealings and Trump’s controversial comments.

Articulating details and implications of her policies is where Clinton is expected to have an advantage. But wavering voters are going to be won over on personality and character rather than policy, some political experts say.

“This election more than others is not about policy arguments,” said Shaun Bowler, a political scientist at UC Riverside. “It’s about an underlying sense of who the candidates are and the emotional connections they make with voters.”

Teflon Trump

Trump’s displayed his ability to dominate the stage in 11 primary debates, where his unbridled, instinctive responses – and attacks – sometimes seemed to overwhelm his opponents.

“It’s amazing how nothing derails him, including things that could destroy another candidate,” Bowler said. “Clinton is looking for a handhold on the Teflon.”

“Nobody’s laid a glove on him in a debate,” he said. “One of his main strengths is leaving his opponents not knowing what to say. The real challenge is to not always be thinking about what he’s going to do next.”

As Clinton and her team have studied hours of Trump debate tapes, they’ve seen his boisterousness and affinity for the camera play well.

Besides working on maintaining her equilibrium and making a case for herself, Clinton has likely been preparing a strategy for effectively attacking the Republican nominee.

“She’s going to be looking for a way to rattle him,” Pitney said. “What she most wants is to show his disqualifying qualities – anger, ignorance, intolerance. She’s going to be looking for the buttons to push. Something to cause him to Hulk out.”

But if Clinton engages in no-holds-barred verbal brawling, Trump won’t be the only one needing to mind his demeanor, analysts say.

“When her voice elevates and she raises her finger and she gets defensive, people don’t like it,” Han said.

Given the attention paid to Clinton’s recent bout of pneumonia, coughing is also best avoided.

Han lamented that many viewers probably won’t focus on substantive policy issues – and that those without a preferred candidate are choosing between people they don’t like.

“Undecided voters are looking to see if they can live with backing one candidate or another,” she said. “It’s not a battle for being the most positive, but a battle to be an acceptable choice.”

For all the attention focused on the debate, it won’t necessarily be the end of the line if one candidate performs poorly. Two more debates are scheduled in October.

“Don’t forget that at the first debate for Obama against Mitt Romney, Obama bombed,” Sonenshein said. “Then he came back and ran the table.”

Martin Wisckol has been the Register's politics writer and weekly Buzz columnist since 1998, and was given the title of political editor by a generous boss in 2011. He started his career writing about surfing and music, but has written predominantly about government and politics since 1985. He has held reporting positions in his hometown of San Diego, as well as in Detroit, Jacksonville and Miami. Along the way, he has put in extended stints in Japan, South America and Switzerland. His work has been honored by the Society of Professional Journalists, the National Headliner Awards, the California Newspaper Publishers Association and the Florida Press Club, among others.

Join the Conversation

We invite you to use our commenting platform to engage in insightful conversations about issues in our community. Although we do not pre-screen comments, we reserve the right at all times to remove any information or materials that are unlawful, threatening, abusive, libelous, defamatory, obscene, vulgar, pornographic, profane, indecent or otherwise objectionable to us, and to disclose any information necessary to satisfy the law, regulation, or government request. We might permanently block any user who abuses these conditions.

If you see comments that you find offensive, please use the “Flag as Inappropriate” feature by hovering over the right side of the post, and pulling down on the arrow that appears. Or, contact our editors by emailing moderator@scng.com.